This weekend, the Netroots Nation Presidential Town Hall was interrupted by #BlackLivesMatter protesters demanding an acknowledgment of, and a response to, the structural Americal racism that continues to claim the lives of black citizens
on a weekly basis.
The activists said their urgency and passion arose from two moments this week that they wanted everyone at the conference — including O’Malley and Sanders — to understand: the death of Sandra Bland on Monday in a jail cell where police say she committed suicide, and the one-year anniversary of the death of Eric Garner, who was killed in a struggle with police in New York City. Garner’s death galvanized the #BlackLivesMatter movement. [...]
After the event, Angela Peoples, one of the co-directors of Get Equal, said the activists wanted to hear concrete steps and actions from presidential candidates on what they’re going to do to not just stop police violence and deaths in police custody but also what they’re going to do about reflecting the ethos of “black lives matter” in their campaigns.
The broad consensus is that neither of the two Democratic candidates acquitted themselves well
in their responses.
The reaction of the candidates after the protest was varied and significant. O’Malley spent the entire day sitting with activists, publicly apologizing for his “white/all lives matter” remarks in an interview with This Week in Blackness and generally atoning for his performance. Sanders canceled all his events, including meetings with black and brown activists. At his evening speech before 11,000 in the same convention center, he did obliquely address the issue, using practiced lines he has said in the past but with a little more depth.
A roundup of reactions and analysis, below the fold:
- Eclectablog:
Sitting in the middle of this maelstrom was a fascinating experience. I, like many of the others there, was initially irritated by the protestors. I was there to hear the candidates and was frustrated that they weren’t being heard. Even a bit angry, in fact. “These are your allies,” I thought. “Why on earth are you attacking them? Why are you disrupting an event where the people there are sympathetic to your cause?” [...]
Every single one of these emotions that ran through my white privileged brain in the first few moments of the protest until I was slapped across the face with what I was being forced to confront.
- Sabrina Hersi Issa:
There is a political cost to creating silos within movements: politicians and citizens end up speaking of the same issues with different languages, with a lack of empathy and connection. Though Sanders’s policy proposals likely align with number of black voters, his ability to address race is limited to the scope of wealth and the economy. But black voters and organizers need to know why they should fight for Bernie Sanders’ vision of our economic future when our humanity is in constant peril.
- "Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley Failed their #BlackLivesMatter Test"
Sanders couldn’t get past his mindset: that if you fix economic inequality in America, social justice will naturally follow. Historical experience doesn’t show this; Bland was an educated black woman went to Texas for a job interview and three days later, was found dead in her jail cell.
- During his subsequent This Week In Blackness interview, Gov. Martin O'Malley apologized for the tone-deafness of his "black lives matter, white lives matter" comment. The video is available here.
- Sander's angry response to the protesters, "I've spent 50 years of my life fighting for civil rights. If you don't want me to be here, that's OK," earned him considerable Twitter blowback.
- Joan Walsh argues that the incident is representative of a larger problem for Sanders:
Sanders has a genuine problem with the Democratic Party’s African American and Latino base, and no amount of insisting that class supersedes race will change that. I wrote about it last month, and got a ton of pushback from Sanders backers. Then came the conflict at Netroots Nation on Saturday, where Sanders was heckled by Black Lives Matter protesters. [...]
This issue isn’t going away.